


Don't run from the coming storm ('cause it can't keep a storm from coming)

by ImberReader



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Excessive descriptions of storms, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mostly emotional but some physical too, Search and Rescue, There is only one spare blanket to cuddle in for warmth!, all is well that ends well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:22:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberReader/pseuds/ImberReader
Summary: After finding Sansa Stark and temporarily losing contact with SAR headquarters during a vicious storm, Jaime and Brienne take refuge in empty cabin in the Northern Mountains with her. The night is long and fraught with painful memories and fears that have not lost their power.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68





	Don't run from the coming storm ('cause it can't keep a storm from coming)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jencat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jencat/gifts).



> Jencat prompted "82 and/or 70 for the writing prompts for days" which was “Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while.” + “What are you afraid of?” and, of course, I had to use both of them. Thank you for perfect prompts.
> 
> My apologies to every inaccurate thing about SAR depicted here, my research was haphazard and happened at 2am or so. 
> 
> Much thanks to [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde), who Beta'd this and also gave me the perfect title from [Storm's Comin' by The Wailin' Jennys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OguVb3uSZTs)

It's been several hours since they arrived at Rayder's little cabin on the side of the Northern Mountains, but the wind and the rain has not let up, and the storm tolls even closer than before.

Brienne takes what little comfort she can in the crackling fire that slowly consumes what little firewood had been carried in by Rayder before his departure in spring and pieces of shabby furniture she had broken apart; she'll make sure to compensate him. Jaime had looked like he wanted to comment at that, but refrained, which must've been the testament of the pain he was in.

Not that he wasn't still running his mouth in moments of inspiration. “Looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while,” Jaime had said after they had stumbled in, pushed the busted door closed and barred it to the winds, and unsuccessfully tried to hail help from SAR command center or the rest of their team. Anyone, really.

His voice had had a sort of casualness to it, as if they had been chased under some roof by a sudden downpour and merely missed their bus. As if his right arm wasn't pressed to his chest at an awkward angle that belied its mangled, broken state. As if Sansa Stark wasn't a sobbing mess in Brienne's arms, hungry and hurt. As if Brienne didn't feel each thunder's roll like a wrecking ball beating an unsteady heartbeat against her composure.

Sansa is sleeping now, curled up and pale in the flickering light, every bit of a child that she really is. Brienne tries not to think of Arya who is very likely still out there, weathering this storm somewhere. Hopefully far away from Littlefinger, who Brienne would personally geld, if he wasn't already in police's custody.

Jaime swims in her field of vision, dragging a blanket with him. She hadn't even heard him shuffle through his 24-hour pack, between trying to ignore the storm and the gurgling, muddy stream of her thoughts. She feels bad, for not having helped.

"Since the kid's got yours, thought we could share mine," he speaks in a hushed voice, but he raises the blanket and shakes it a little, aluminized plastic rustling and makes Brienne immediately look over to where Sansa's sleeping. Doesn't seem she's stirred at all.

"No need to look so alarmed, Tarth. Couldn't shock your delicate sensibilities even if I wanted to. Just a good, old-fashioned cuddle for warmth."

She frowns, opens her mouth to rebuke, but lightning strikes so close she thinks it might've embedded itself in her spine, and freezes. Moments later, thunder bellows in a way that blows any thoughts out of her head.

"Don't you trust me?" Jaime asks, mistaking her silence for something else, and bringing her back to the present with the way he genuinely sounds _hurt_. Sansa still sleeps the sleep of an exhausted child and Brienne is suddenly almost envious. Except she isn't. She knows the weight of such sleep too well and…

Brienne tethers herself to this moment instead.

"I do," she tells Jaime, seriously, because she _does_. Despite the way he frustrates her, despite the way he knows how to cut her to the bone, despite the history that drips in his footprints all the way from King's Landing, she trusts him like any other member of her team. And it's never been misplaced, least of all today when he saved her at the expense of his own arm.

"You can't take that back when this little adventure's over," he announces, though still almost whispering, before sitting down next to her. She brings the blanket around them both before Jaime can even make an attempt, careful not to jostle his right arm. She's done the best she can for it and the ibuprofen should have kicked in by now, but it's a far cry from the actual medical help he requires.

Her heart is heavy, as if every bit of mud and rock and the fallen tree that had almost swept them away has turned into guilt manifestation and nestled in there, but Brienne's got no words to express it, so instead she pinches the edges of blanket together in front of them, so he doesn't have to hold them with his left.

She doesn't keep track of time, the only landmark in its vastness is the frequent and devastating lightning and thunder duet. At least she isn't thinking about the other stormy nights, at least she isn't being swept away by the other landslides of guilt that are always biding their time.

“Truth or dare?” Jaime suddenly speaks up, bumping his shoulder into hers as if it was some kind of inside joke of theirs. “Ah, but it's always the truth with you, Tarth, isn't it?" 

Brienne glances at him with a scoff, only to be caught off-guard by the way he's looking at her. Piercing and focused, more than he should with the pain he's in, and searching for something. He has made a habit of it, somehow, looking at and through her, in a way that never matches the insincere charm he often bears.

"I’ll go first," he says, lips pale and stretched into a ghoul of the bright, infuriating smiles she's so used to. "So, tell me, what are you so afraid of?”

"I thought you were supposed to go first." Her lips are dry and she escapes their blanket wrap a little to reach for a water bottle set next to the radio in front of them. There's another lightning streak and she spills some of the water, with the way she squeezes the bottle.

She drinks, ignores the way he's still staring at her. "Yes, with the question. You're shaking like a leaf, tell me why."

"It's cold," she tries to brush him off, but it'd not be convincing even if she was a better liar. She's not. And Jaime knows it - knows her. But she won't answer, she can't, she might unravel if she tries. And so they sink in silence, at least between the two of them, once she cocoons them in the blanket again.

"Fine, I will answer it myself." There is both steel and an echo of a broken string in his quiet voice and she tenses, unsure of what to expect.

"I am afraid of wildfire. And the smell of flesh burning in it. Did you know Aerys loved it? Both, really. The screams, too." He is staring blankly into the fire, but she can tell he sees something else, something he's far too late to be saved from.

"I stopped him. I had to. And the courts agreed, self defense, even though..." he gives half-shrug. "It wasn't me I was scared for." Her hand covers his left, where it's digging into his pants' leg.

"But now, I can't look at it, not even in those big, historic blockbusters. Used to love them, now I have to look up if there's wildfire in it first. Even a trailer can make me shut halfway down." He laughs a little at that, derisive and tired and she doesn't know what to think, because it turns her opinion of him upside down and at the same time, it doesn't change _anything_. It's still him, maddening and beautiful with sharpness. Brave to the point of recklessness. Good, too.

Maybe Jaime won't think of her much less if she says her truth, too. At least it should distract him enough to lose that expectant, empty look. Like anything cruel she could dish out he will laugh off with 'heard already', while hoarding it close like a dagger collection held under his pillow. She knows how easy it is to cut hands on them constantly.

"The storm. I am afraid of storms.” 

There is pause, for a derisive comment about her choice to be in SAR or her being an unlikely Stormlander, but it doesn't come. It's a small relief, almost the opposite. If he had said that, she wouldn't be propelled forward to drop the rest of the story at his feet.

"When I was 5, I wandered too far away from home. My brother had told me Just Maid was hidden somewhere on Tarth, most likely the cave system in the cliffs. And then the storm rolled in and I got stranded on an outcrop in one of the caves as it filled with water." She tries not to recall the piercing white through the darkness, the way the water had been sloshing almost at her feet and seemed to be teeming with shadows of beasts, the way each thunderclap threatened to collapse the ageless stone onto her body. The cold and the belief she's never been so alone in this world. Rather, that the world existed somewhere far beyond her reach.

It had only been the start of the nightmare.

"They found me two days later. But Galladon, who had been desperately looking for me... He had been caught in another cave quite like me, but he. He didn't make it out." She had been crying for her brother and father the moment she was pulled into the daylight, even before, but every adult hauling her toward the ambulance had been too busy telling her it'd be okay now.

They had been lying.

"I joined SAR thinking that maybe I could make a difference, that maybe I could prevent a night like that. My father had grayed in those days, thinking both of us dead." She almost hadn’t recognized him. It had felt like the world the people pulled her into wasn't the one she came from, like she was thrown into some other, cold reality that wasn't hers.

Sometimes, Brienne still feels like that. On days like these, on days she's hurt and afraid of the storm's wrath that rattles in her bones, like some doom-promising amulet. There's been so many, since then. The fireplace she's staring at blurs at the edges.

"And then the floods took Renly. Right before my eyes. I was too slow, too afraid of the storm. I failed him, I failed him, I failed." There are so many she has failed that she can't even begin to name the pressure in her chest now. She's crying now, the blurriness leaking down her cheeks in yet unrealized sobs, but her voice grows choked before it fades out.

"You did your best, Brienne. You did your best today, you pushed where others fell back, and we found her. We _found her_ , Brienne. She is safe from the storm and she will make it home."

Lightning flashes beyond the window pane, swallowing everything in white, horrid light. They're always so insatiable, the storms, and today they almost took Jaime, too. Or her, but part of her _expects_ it someday.

If it had taken him…

"And I _know_ you did your best back then, you're just incapable of doing otherwise. It isn't your fault. Nature is a dick. We aren't gods. We just try to do what they're too nonchalant for."

It doesn't heal her, because nothing will in one swift and graceful touch (she might never, the best she can hope for is a scar), but it soothes her, the conviction in his tone. Jaime's always been blunt with her, he wouldn't coddle her now if he didn't think it true.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer as she starts to sob. "But Galladon," Brienne manages to whisper into his neck through sobs, part of the twisted echo that no logic and therapy manages to silence.

"You were a child, for fuck's sake. I hope your father never blamed you for it, because if he did..." Jaime trails off, with intensity she can almost physically feel like heat. Maybe it's just because he's warm and despite the blankets, she hasn't felt not freezing since they left the base in the morning.

"No, never." It might have been easier if he did, like some of the townsfolk did (Roelle, her homeroom teacher, might as well have written 'disobedient little killer' in her journal, with the contempt she filled _Brienne_ with.). Maybe if he didn't mourn so carefully around her, as if afraid that if he showed his hurt, he'd hurt _her_.

But she understands, she does. After all, for the same reasons, Brienne could never speak about the canyon of hurt and guilt in her heart, because how could she ask her father to comfort her, when he was in pain, too, and because of her?

"Good," Jaime tells her and lets her cry, seemingly understanding that no shushing can fix this broken dam, battered by too many different blows today.

Maybe she dozes off, maybe she just cries softly for so long that the only thing she can register anymore is the crackle of fire, but at some point, she snaps to the realization that there's no more thunder and white hatred dancing beyond the window.

Jaime's head is resting atop hers, so she must've fallen asleep, and there is a crick in her neck, so surely his, too, but he isn't aware just yet as his breathing is deep and even. She doesn't move to wake him up, he needs every moment of rest he can get.

It's not _comfortable_ like this and yet it somehow is. She feels empty and almost light for it, instead of just floating down the stream like... Like something else than the first comparison on her mind. Brienne closes eyes again, allows the warmth to settle somewhere deep in her, anchored there with Jaime's inhales and exhales.

And then, the radio crackles to life. "Selmy to Tarth and Lannister, can you hear me? Over."

She untangles herself from the nest they've made somehow as fast as she can while being careful so that Jaime wouldn't fall over and hurt his arm. Her hands are shaking when she grabs the radio, though for different reasons now.

"Tarth here, with Lannister. In Rayder's cabin. We have Sansa Stark, safe, but with a sprained ankle. Lannister has sustained a severe arm injury, we will not be able to make it back on our own. Over." The relief rushes to her head with speed that makes her dizzy. She feels Jaime stirring behind her and she turns to look at him, smiling.

"Copy that. We are on our way. And just so you know, Arya Stark was brought in by Sandor Clegane a few hours ago. Over."

Brienne sags because that is better news than she could've hoped for and it's so unexpectedly _much_.

"You did it, Briene," Jaime tells her and his smile looks more familiar. But not quite the same. Warmer, somehow. The shift is almost imperceptible, but she's always been good at telling when winter sunrises become those of spring. And he calls her by her name still, with almost fondness, that settles somewhere in her chest like a golden chain with a little bell.

"We did it," Brienne corrects him. Then, she wills her legs to function once again and gives his good shoulder a gentle squeeze on her way to wake Sansa.

Soon, they will be home and it won't be quite like before, but maybe for once the storm will leave behind something kind, instead of taking and taking with it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is last pre-written piece I have for now, so I do not know when and if and how I will return with a new story, but thank you to every reader, of this and anything else I've put up, you've made this last year in writing something truly special.


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